Is your Nigerian international passport expiring next year or you need to get one soon? Then you had better start the processing now.
Getting a Nigerian international passport today is as difficult as seeking an appointment to see the President. The Nigeria Immigration Service for months have been complaining of non availability of booklet. Can you believe that! With the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC), we still can’t print our passport.
The process of getting a Nigerian international passport is not well streamlined at all, it was deliberately structured to favour racketeering and touting. As a result of increase in the price of passport from N7,000 to N20,000 earlier in the year, to get one is from N30,000 upwards as you can’t get it at the official price.
That’s not the end of the story, you will have to wait for weeks and in some cases for months to get it. In the usual shelving of responsibility symptomatic of Nigerian agencies, the Nigerian Immigration Service is advising applicants who need passports to henceforth fill the applications online, as a way of checking the activities of middlemen which it help created.
If you are traveling very soon and you need to get a passport, be ready to spend big to get your passport in time or you forgone the trip.